Like It or Not, Baseball’s Future Involves Nerds and Showboats

By

Jeremy Gordon

Mar 14, 2016 2:30 pm ET

PHILADELPHIA, PA – SEPTEMBER 15: Bryce Harper #34 of the Washington Nationals hits a solo home run in the top of the first inning against the Philadelphia Phillies on September 15, 2015 at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Mitchell Leff/Getty Images) Published Credit: Mitchell Leff/Getty Images

Mitchell Leff/Getty Images

Like the unending grind of city construction with its scaffolds hanging off unfinished buildings and the cranes clogging the lane during your daily commute, there will never be a day when someone is not mad about sports. Goose Gossage is only the latest avatar of a long-gestating culture war between baseball’s past and future—a fight that continually points toward modernity, despite the harrumphing of traditionalists.

Recently, smash mouth slugger Bryce Harper—as young and exciting of a player as they came—made comments indicating that baseball’s current fixation with playing “the right way” is becoming increasingly stale as kids gravitate toward more performative, exciting athletes. Cam Newton dabs; Stephen Curry turns away from the basket before his shot has even fallen; these are exhilarating to see, unlike the fussy fist pump and solemn nod that accompanies 95% of baseball’s in-game activity. Remember the tsking that followed Jose Bautista’s epic bat flip, which only accompanied one of the most exciting moments in playoff history? Bautista should’ve known better than to be excited, they said. Those views were echoed in a loud, profane interview from Hall of Famer Goose Gossage, whose commitment to rocking the handlebar mustache should remind you that he’ll always, always have something to say. Showboating and nerds were ruining the game, Gossage said, in the spittle-flecked tone of someone who thinks math is a lie. He also said Bautista’s behavior reflected on all the Latin players, an incredibly simplistic blanket statement. (One wouldn’t say that Gossage’s harrumphing reflected on all white players.) Because Gossage is a venerated figure for his accomplished career, his comments set off a discussion about baseball’s ongoing culture war, and Gossage’s right to perpetuate it. “We can assume that Goose Gossage—who was teammates with Rickey Henderson and Dennis Eckersley and Reggie Jackson—is less concerned with showboating and youthful narcissism and deviations from baseball’s grim and coppish norms than he is with the horror of realizing that those celebrations are no longer his,” writes Vice’s David Roth. “There is nothing special or inherently admirable about the past, really, except that we were younger when it was happening, but people will go a long way to avoid looking this fact in the face.”